Anti-Catholicism and the Times

“Anti-Catholicism,” said writer Peter Viereck, “is the anti-Semitism of the intellectual.” It is “the deepest-held bias in the history of the American people,” said Arthur Schlesinger Sr.

If there was any doubt that hatred of and hostility toward the Catholic Church persists, it was removed by the mob that has arisen howling “Resign!” at Pope Benedict XVI.

To American Catholics, the story of pedophile priests engaged in criminal abuse of children, of pervert priests seducing boys, is unfortunately all too familiar. That some bishops covered up for pedophiles and seducers and enabled corrupt clergy to continue to prey on boys was equally disgraceful.

But to American Catholics, this is an old story. The priests have been defrocked, some sent to prison, like John Geoghan, who was strangled in his cell. Bishops have been removed. “Zero tolerance” has been policy for a decade.

Pope Benedict came to America to apologize for what these men did. And no one has been more aggressive in rooting out what he calls the “filth” in the church. And as the recent scandals have hit Ireland and Germany, why the attack on the pope here in America?

Answer: The New York Times is conducting a vendetta against this traditionalist pope in news stories, editorials and columns.

“Vatican Declined to Defrock U.S. Priest Who Abused Boys,” blared the headline over a Laurie Goodstein story that began thus:

“Top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys …

“In 1996, Cardinal Ratzinger failed to respond to two letters about the case from Rembert G. Weakland, Milwaukee’s archbishop at that time.”

The facts:

That diabolical priest, Lawrence C. Murphy, was assigned to St. John’s School for the Deaf in 1950, before Joseph Ratzinger was even ordained.

Reports of his abuse of the deaf children surfaced in the 1950s. But, under three archbishops, nothing was done. Police and prosecutors were alerted by parents of the boys. Nothing was done.

Weakland, who became archbishop in 1977, did not write to Rome until 1996.

And as John Allen of National Catholic Reporter noted last week, Cardinal Ratzinger “did not have any direct responsibility for managing the overall Vatican response to the crisis until 2001. … Prior to 2001, Ratzinger had nothing personally to do with the vast majority of sex abuse cases, even the small percentage which wound up in Rome.”

By the time Cardinal Ratzinger was commissioned by John Paul II to clean out the stable, Murphy had been dead for three years.

Yet here is Times columnist Maureen Dowd’s summation of the case:

“Now we learn the sickening news that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, nicknamed ‘God’s Rotweiler,’ when he was the church’s enforcer on matters of faith and sin, ignored repeated warnings and looked away in the case of the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, a Wisconsin priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys.”

In Goodstein’s piece, Weakland is a prelate who acted too slowly. The controversy over his clouded departure from the Milwaukee archdiocese is mentioned and passed over at the bottom of the story. It belonged higher.

For Weakland was a homosexual who confessed in a 1980 letter he was in “deep love” with a male paramour who shook down the archbishop for $450,000 in church funds as hush money to keep his lover’s mouth shut about their squalid affair.

According to Rod Dreher, Weakland moved Father William Effinger, who would die in prison, from parish to parish, knowing Effinger was a serial pederast.

When one of Effinger’s victims sued the archdiocese but lost because of a statute of limitations, Weakland counter-sued and extracted $4,000 from the victim of his predator priest.

Dreher describes Weakland’s tenure thus:

“He directed Catholic schools … to teach kids how to use condoms as part of AIDS education and approved a graphic sex-education program for parochial-school kids that taught ‘there is no right and wrong’ on the issues of abortion, contraception and premarital sex. He has advocated for gay rights and women’s ordination, bitterly attacked Pope John Paul II, denounced pro-lifers as ‘fundamentalist’ and declared that one could be both pro-choice and a Catholic in good standing.”

Speaking of sex-abuse victims in 1988, Weakland was quoted: “Not all adolescent victims are so innocent. Some can be sexually very active and aggressive and often streetwise.”

Just the kind of priest the Times loves, and just the kind of source on whom the Times relies when savaging the pope and bashing the church.

As the Catholic League’s Bill Donahue relates, 80 percent of the victims of priestly abuse have been males and “most of the molesters gays.”

And as the Times‘ Richard Berke blurted to the Gay and Lesbian Journalists Association 10 years ago, often, “three-quarters of the people deciding what’s on the front page are not-so-closeted homosexuals.”

Is there perhaps a conflict of interest at The New York Times, when covering a traditionalist Catholic pope?

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42 Responses to Anti-Catholicism and the Times

What do you find most repulsive about child molestation and child rape? Those who commit the atrocities or those who were asked to help and did nothing like Joseph Ratzinger or those who continue to apologize for the cowards who did nothing like you? I think all of you are are the worst of cowards. But everyone needs an apologist and you have to be the one for Pope Joseph Ratzinger – Patron Saint of Child Rapists. And columnists like you, who hide their weakness by diverting attention to the real issues. What part of this scenario has anything good in it? Children were raped, Joey the Ratz knew about it, Joey did nothing, children continued to be raped, and Pat continues to make excuses for Joey’s actions by blaming someone else. That pretty much sums it up.

You are mistaken and sick. These horrible old men have not been put in jail. Look at Rev. Francis Stinner, a monster who was knocked of the church in the mid-2000s, after more than 30 years (!!!!) of Vatigan knowledge of his crimes. He continues to live in a residential home in Somers, NY where he is feet away from many small boys. Look up his name in the phone book. He did damage to me and hundreds of other boys.

I would say, “rpt in hell” to him, if he hadn’t destroyed my belief in the church when he served as the head of the religion department at the Catholic high school I attended and was molested by him at.

Excellent article. The world needs to know this scandal is primarily a homosexual problem. The church has tried relentlessly to reach out to the homosexual community but, continually, has it’s hand bitten by them. Any sex outside of marriage (of course between a man and a woman) is a sin and puts people at risk of losing their salvation. This is the truth that many do not want to hear. Those molesting priests should have never been ordained in the first place because of their homosexuality.

These gays are sinister. They infiltrated the Church because it was a great place to get ahold of adolescent boys, steal Church money and debauch with other gay priests. What a perfect playground for them. Now the perverts at large are protesting outside St. Patricks in NYC pretending these pervert priests are not gay. Yes, they are gay and they have infiltrated the Church to its very heights. But you know they are really just a chastisement on the vast majority of Catholics who are not really Caholic because they willingly choose to violate Church teachings on birth control, abortion, cohabitation,etc, etc.

i see no coming back for priesthood till there is a renunciation of the practice of homosexuality and the church exchanges the word pedophile for homosexual. Many young men when they know can get in, graduate, get ahead, not be surrounded their whole life with those they find instinctively something wrong with, will gratuitously encounter the love to become good priests. I think New York Times is doing its job admirably condemning priests bishops and cardinals and popes who knew of abuse and did not refer to authorities for justice. Hooray for the NY Times.
Btw, I’m a retired guy who goes to Mass couple times a week.

The vitriol spewed by Maureen Dowd in her editorial and the earlier article in the Times amount to a smear against the Church’s leadership and against Pope Benedict personally. These new incidents aren’t about some massive Church conspiracy to cover up and get their priests off the hook, as reading the Times articles would clearly imply. After reading the Times article and Dowd’s editorial, it is obvious that the Times has a bitter anti-Catholic bias. Even a casual observer, as I am, can read the facts of the case and see that the story should have been about Weakland, his dissident views, and his cover up of a perverted priest under his authority. As for the German priest, it is a further example of what happened in Boston: hiding, transferring, and coddling of sexual predators in priestly garments by some foolish bishops of the Church. Who knows how much Cardinal Ratsinger knew at the time? The Times certainly assumes the worst, that much is clear, and they make every tenuous connection to Benedict as damning as possible.

With that said, of course the Church deserves criticism fro failing to take seriously the crimes of its priests and act to stop them. By choosing to keep the scandals an internal matter and failing to act decisively, many bishops and priests have destroyed the faith of people like John and the many people who have left the Church because of it. If the Church has failed to live up to its mission, it is certainly because of its churchmen, not the Church itself.

But the point of this article is not to apologize for the awful crimes committed or the human filth who got away with them or those who knew and did nothing. These things should be brought to light and justice done. But the irrational hatred of the Times columnists for the Church makes it that much harder for the truth to come to light and justice done.

God bless Pope Benedict. Lord spare us from the evil and deceitful homosexual perverts trying to destroy Your church from within and from the outside. You said ” The gates of hell cannot prevail against Your church.” Amen, so be it..

We have such a well-tuned and coordinated chorus singing hate at PJB, and the Catholic church, that it seems discordant to try to inject some balance here.

I would point out that a priest whose original orientation was homosexual, if he is faithful to his vows, has left his sexual identity behind.

We are concerned with rates of failure, and priests both hetero and otherwise show a much lower failure rate that the population in general.

What is egregious, of course, is the betrayal of trust, and the damage to peoples’ faith, as well as the desire to cover such matters up, and the enabling of future crimes.

But just like you can smell a stealth-lib who likes to hang out at a conservative site, who hasn’t come to exchange ideas or build up conservatism, so too you can smell anti-catholic and anti-christian fervor.

Some don’t sound like the kind of “forgive the person, but imprison because of the action” christians that I normally meet in church.

As a lifelong practicing Catholic Pat B. is just another apologist and not very good at it. In the “traditional” Church of the 1950’s I and every other altar boy was molested by our parish priest. We would warn others what to do if Father tried such and such. Later in life I personally learned of priests who had female lovers some for over 40 years and on one occasion a secret wife and children. It is not just a homosexual problem. The Bishops of the Church have failed miserably as the Good Shephard.

“But you know they are really just a chastisement on the vast majority of Catholics who are not really Caholic because they willingly choose to violate Church teachings on birth control, abortion, cohabitation,etc, etc.”

It sounds like you knew my ex-wife very well. You failed to mention that she divorced her first husband before she married me. In her defense, she was definitely not homosexual.

I generally agree with you opinions and insights. On the issue at hand, it also seems the facts are on your side with regard to Ratzinger’s guilt in the case of Murphy. However, Ratzinger is no “traditionalist”, in fact he is no Catholic. The guy is full of modernist indifferentism and relativism. Ever read his goobly goop? He and his Vatican II predecessors are ultimately responsible for the wretched fruit of the last 40 years of destruction in the Church.

The smoke of Satan has entered the Catholic Church through the very evil acts of priests who allowed Satan to enter their hearts. The Catholic Church must be purified of this evil, and there will be suffering both on the part of the victims and the holy priests who truly follow in the footsteps of Jesus. There is so much anger and hurt among the victims. We must pray for them, that they be cleansed of the hurts and betrayals they have suffered. Holy Mass and communions, rosaries, and novenas must be prayed from the heart for them. We must love and pray for them as they are children of God, and they have been robbed of their innocence and abused beyond belief. . We must also pray for the priests, bishops, cardinals and our beloved Pope who are carrying the cross of betrayal and mistrust before the world. Our Heavenly Father weeps over these crimes and Our Blessed Mother weeps too for the hurts and pain, and abuse that were given by priests who are supposed to personify her Son, Jesus Christ. It is true that “the gates of hell cannot prevail against the Church”. We, the members, of the Catholic Church, must pray unceasingly for the victims and for our priests.We must pray and carry the light of Christ in the darkness of this world. We must do our part to stop the gates of hell. God will do the rest. Jesus, we trust in You!

Pat, you’ve really outdone yourself this time. That shark is well and truly jumped.

But then, since there’s no video footage of Ratzinger actually ordering anyone to carry on the Catholic Church’s institutionalised practice of protecting and enabling paedophiles, I guess it can’t have happened.

And since it can’t have happened, anyone reporting on it – must – be fired up by Liberal anti-Catholic bias.

And anyway, Teh Gayz Did It! So there!

So simple a child could have thought of it. A child, or a deeply sick old man.

First I want to apologize to John for all the pain and degradation he went through. This scandal was/is an abomination and the Church will have to forever hide their heads in shame for allowing this to happen. Please accept my heartfelt thoughts and prays for your recovery… As for the Priest you mentioned I have no doubt that what you wrote was true, but I would like to know further about this if this Priest is getting away with what amounts to murder of the innocence of children….Having said all that, I don’t believe this was a systematic abuse perpatrated by the Church.. Most Bishops sent these predators away for treatment but the mistake they made was taking the advise of the secular doctors and sending them back into mininstry. As in the case of the Milwarkee diocese, the gay Bishop was primarity responsible for that, allowing this abusive Priest to continue. The Pope was not notified until the late nineties and notably canceled the statue of limitations on this case. The rest is history…Finally all of that does not excuse your abuse. and for that I am truly sorry….

What about the police and lawyers who covered up when they were advised of the abuse by priests? Weren’t they the ones who advised bishops how to deal with the issue. I may be wrong, but that is my understanding based on a story the mother of one victim shared on the TODAY show several years ago.
There were many cover ups by many people. Maybe it is time for the NYT to do a more thorough investigation into who advised them to protect the priests.
The vile and evil of those espousing to be priests is deplorable and they will have to face their God who will have the final say.
These men are despicable! Let us pray for all those whose lives have been touched by their filthy predators.
Look at all the good priests who far out number the abusers.
What about all the other faith denominations and the Scout Leaders who have done the same? It is an addiction of evil!

Let us zero in on Pat’s final question of the article,”Is there perhaps a conflict of interest at The New York Times, when covering a traditionalist Catholic Pope?” I would contend, yes indeed there is and homosexually oriented bishops is a big part of it, but the obvious part of it is currently that the richest man in the world is a major stock holder. He is also a prime
beneficiary of an order currently before The Curia for final adjudification. I contend that this order and this beneficiary and homosexual, unorthodox, liberation theology and socialist leaning bishops would like to demonize BXVI and let Sodano and themselves continue with business as usual.

My mother recently overheard a women state, ” I was born and raised Catholic, I raised my children Catholic, but, no more.” The women’s statement came in reaction to the recently reported trangressions within the Church, most specifically the sexual abuse of 200 deaf boys in the Diocese of Milwaukee. The women’s decision to denounce her religion must have delighted satan. As, shall the millions of others who join her in abandoning the Church as a result of the recent revelations of the scandals involving child molestation.

Why should satan be so delighted? Because his plan is working as he witnesses one after another baptized Catholic leave the Mother Church, selectively rejecting recieving the Eucharist, the body and blood of Jesus Christ, in the process. Most of the Catholics who are exiting the Church do so without understanding what they’re leaving behind, over half of Catholics born after 1960 don’t believe in the Divine Presence in the Eucharist. If Christians truly believed that Christ is present in the Eucharist would they even consider to abandon the provider of It. It would be as if persons dying from a disease choose not to go to the hospital which provides the cure because the hospital is filled with doctors who engage in activities that are seen as offensive by the ill patients. They would rather die than be served their cure by someone they’ve deemed reprehensible. This self-denial comes as a result of pride.How satan must be laughing at his handiwork.

So, how has satan managed to injure and persecute the Church? The answer is through the same method he has used to curse humanity, through the proliferation of fear. The tactic used by satan in the Garden of Eden, using fear (fear of being without) to prompt temptation which leads to a self-serving (rather than serving God’s desire) action towards alleviating the fear, is the same one serving his effort to crucify the Church.

The exact match which was struck leading to this fire is uncertain, but, it can be presumed that it was an incident(s) ignited be fear. For example, one man’s lust (the fear of being without a specific desire) could have led to sexually abusing a boy who evolves into a homosexual young man. This young man, a faithful Catholic, fears being tormented by society as a result of his sexuality and chooses to become a priest, not from being called, but rather from an act of self preservation. Since the choice of becoming a priest was not founded in love, a desire to do the will of God, but rather fear, then the fruit of the individual’s service to the Church is ripe to spoil. This priest could allow his own lust to lead to abuse or affairs with other priests/seminarians and/or he could become a bishop and be empathetic to incidences of abuse. Other Bishops could be put in positions, from dealing with abuse cases, where they fear the Church being damaged by controversy or criticisms so decisions are made to alleviate the fear. However, the choice to move an abusive priest from one parish (based on the presumption that by moving him from the object of his lust will fix the problem) to another poured gasoline of the fire.

To truly love the Church and be a servant for Christ the leadership within the Church should have been willing to suffer the consequences of condemning the cases of abuse and turning over the priest to the proper authorities.

However, it has been one fear leading to another leading to another which now has led baptized Catholics fearing to be associated with their Church. Those who tolerated the original slate of offenses are now facing the latest allegations with the mentality of injure me once shame on you, injure me twice and shame on me. So pride (fear of being without respect and admiration) compels the individual to choose to not defend the Church or the Catholic religion for the sake of not being criticized for their beliefs.

If what is occurring to the Church is part of the passion which it is prophesized to endure then the persecutions that it has been challenged with are going to continue to get worse. As the Church strives through its own passion will Catholics be as Peter, denying their association to the Church, or be as John, drawn by the Blessed Mother to be there at the foot of the crucifixion.

When two bishops in a row resigned after exsposure of homosexual acts and payoff to minors and over twenty five years or more, I began to read and study back through the history of The Church to find the source of this behavior and cover-up. The conclusion is it began as someone else has pointed out, when Adam noticed he needed a fig leaf. St. Paul offered a sugestion of how to deal with it. Peter Damien tried. St. Frances tried another way. Gerald Fitzgerald as the first therapist of Priests with this problem said, “They were incurable.” He said the bishops should put them on a monastery island and they should never be around the general populace again. So I don’t want to hear that the bishops were acting according to the pronosis of therapists. They have been crucifying, Jesus, by exaulting ,the reputation of a man, group of men or all manhood, over the dignity of the human person of motherhood and childhood. The difference between other men and the all male hierarchy of The Church doing this is the priesthood acts in the person of Christ. They are thereby mocking God. It will go better for Ninevah on that day.

Pat, so, since you’re straight and the majority of reporters at TAC are straight, then by your reasoning, TAC is conspiring against homosexuals and linking them to pedophiles, who are, historically, STRAIGHT.

It’s as grand moment for many who childishly hate the holy father (aka, the pope) to rip into him as demons devour the innocent (like pedifiles themselves) without a measure of consideration of the facts. Sequestering unique packets of imformation to build a mental thought process is not in seeking Truth. As humans, our lives are connected day to day by time worn truths and not the splendor of fashionable mental visualizations. The residue of the 60’s and 70’s sex revolution to western civ. was disastrous to the balance of true human nature. The progressive ethos broke down the gates to the common sensibilities of man. The freedom of sexual experiment and unhinged expression became the zeitgeist and thus the Church, the family, marriages, children, schools all have paid dearly and will continue to do so. Remember how defiant the secularists inside and outside the church were about Humane Vitae in 1968- and then came Rowe v Wade, Card. Bernardine in Chicago’s ‘Seanless Garmet’ to sell abortion to Kennedy democrats and the nuns who threw off their habits in exchange for a sexually liberating lifestyle and walked away fro being devoted teachers in Catholic schools (so much for the sincere care for children in our midst indeed).
Listening to the voices of well-known, broken and angry Vatican (Magisterium) haters who are at the seed of these social tragedies are making the most of an opportunity in using a more than willing accomplice (the main stream media) for political and also monetary gain. I’ve met many of them, they hate their political enemy far more than they give a damn for those who are victims in the alledged cases.

Also noteworthy, is that, recent statistics show that secular public schools have far more sexual abuse cases on record in percentage than does instances affiliated with the Catholic Church. Try to present this statistic and see how quick the door gets shut in your face. Now that is liberal tolerance in action.

“Simon, Simon! Listen! Satan has received permission to test all of you, to separate the good from the bad, as a farmer separates the wheat from the chaff. But I have prayed for you Simon, that your faith will not fail. And when you turn back to me, you must strengthen your brothers.” Luke 22:31-32

In an article for a Sydney-based magazine that was written – indeed was published – well before the latest NYT lynching-bee, I wrote: “Maria Monk has not died, but merely moved to a ritzier address, where she maintains a blatant ménage à trois with Dan Brown and Christopher Hitchens.” Little did I know how extra a weight of truth my words would come to acquire.

On another magazine’s comments blog, someone wrote (if memory serves me) the following words: “Wake me up when the NYT starts whining about pedophile imams and pedophile atheists.” Couldn’t put it better myself, particularly in view of Daniel Cohn-Bendit’s basing a pagan political career on his self-confessed kiddy-fiddling. As for Britain’s Peter Tatchell and Harriet Harman …

Anti Catholcism is right. Nobody looks at all the abuse cases, they just focus on Catholic priests. I saw a survey the other day where more abusers are in other denominations and also, the highest rate of abuse is in families, from parents or relatives. Wake up people, ths is a clear case of abusive accusations and prejudicial remarks against Catholicism. No one really cares about the victims, all they are foccused on is making the Catholic church look bad.. Either accuse all abusers or none.

There may be a thread of anti-catholicism in the media, but this is what I cannot figure out:

You have a number of priests who were caught molesting children. Instead of calling the police, the first instinct is to protect the church and then move the priest to another parish?

That’s what’s driving the frenzy. I’m personally an agnostic. If someone else wants to go to church, that’s fine with me – this is America and people have the freedom to worship (or not worship) as they wish. I’m sure John Stuart Mill would agree with me on this point. However, once church members start committing crimes, it becomes a societal issue and everyone can weigh in.

When you have people within a church that shield child molesters, then they’re an accessory to the crime. Why haven’t they been prosecuted under RICO statutes? It wasn’t for the pope to decide whether or not the Wisconsin priest was defrocked – he should have made sure that law enforcement knew of the priest’s actions so that the priest could have died in jail where he belonged.

Everyone can dress this up as the work of satan – but this is pretty clear: This mess is the result of sick people who were protected rather than handed over to the police. I’m surprised that a ‘conservative’ magazine cannot see this as a simple issue of law and order. It sounds instead like everyone is busy at pointing the finger at society rather than the true criminals.

Pat does a good job here putting the timeline together. And there is no doubt, as he argues, that the recent coverage of these old cases has exposed an ugly and venomous anti-Catholicism which has sprouted up, not just in the news forums where you will see hate-speech in its purest unadulterated form (check out the forums on Yahoo News to get a taste), but in the establishment media.

I live in Los Angeles where KFI Radio broadcasts an afternoon show called the John and Ken Show. They have been on the air here for nearly twenty years and have always made it clear that they hate Catholics (this is not hyperbole–I think they would admit this themselves), but recently their attacks could have come right out of a KKK rally. Real nasty and bigoted stuff, such as referring to the Church as the church of child rapists, Cardinal Mahony as the chief of child rapists, etc. Again, this is what they are actually saying. Check out their audio archives if you have any doubt.

When I was a kid I remember reading all of this kind of vitriol and hate in these short comic book tracts published and distributed by an anti-Catholic organization called Tony Alamo Ministries. These tracts used to be placed on our family car’s windshield while we were attending mass so when we came out of church there the tracts would be there for us to read. The people who quietly and secretly placed them there were, of course, gone (anti-Catholicism was not yet fashionable then). But the comic books were there for us Catholics to pick up just as soon as mass was over. Despite the best efforts of my parents to make sure I didn’t keep any of these tracts, as a kid I enjoyed reading comics so I always managed to slip them into my pocket so I could look through them at a later time.

These comic tracts would always depict nuns and priests involved in all kinds of immoral activities, usually involving orgies or some other sexual deviancy. The comics were crude and vulgar, but the depictions and language used in them could never make it to the public airwaves. They had to be underground for they were incredibly offensive and would be considered hate-speech by anyone who came across one.

The irony now, thirty years or so later, is that this language and these depictions of priests and the Catholic Church are being recycled all over again, but this time it’s not by some underground hate group that distributes them in private while their victims are attending mass, but by seemingly respectable media figures like Bill Maher, Christopher Hitchens, and John and Ken on KFI. The language they use in describing the Church, the Pope and priests is nearly identical to the language and depictions used in these tracts.

Just today on my way home from work I made the mistake of coming across the John and Ken show on KFI and within twenty seconds of landing on their station they were imploring parents to make sure their children were kept as far away from priests as possible, for all priests, they claimed, posed a danger to children. This is the type of hate-speech we have been getting from these two bigots for several years now. But I am sure there are many others who may be following this recipe for ratings success. Hating Catholics seems to be a ratings winner.

I think it is unfair for anyone to attack the institution of the Catholic Church. It is a force for good and the hope for a world moral force. The present pope has called for a re-christianization Europe whose roots are christian. He did not use the term Catholic, but Christian. Europe is ignoring its core values which it needs at this time. Muslims are coming to Europe and trying to impose their religion, culture, and sharia law on the continent. They do not want equality, but they want special treatment. England has caved in on permitting Muslim courts to deal with domestic disputes and British courts then rubber stamp the decisions. If a Christian questions or ridicules Muslim ways, there are calls for Jihad, but Muslims ridicule Christians and it is excused. I believe there are severe penalties in Saudi Arabia for holding Christian services. Where is the equity in that. If Christian values were re-born in Europe and also America, we would have less clergy abuse. It is not just Catholic priests who have been abusive, but ministers and rabbis. But what about the abuse of children by Imams whoc teach them to hate and kill. Abuse by clergy must be stopped, but go to the root causes and fix them. The pope cannot do it alone. He has a plan which is cited above and that is wise to follow.

Why would someone with healthy sexual attraction to the opposite sex become a priest? Would an organization that covers up pedophilia and forbids normal sexual relations not attract a sick element? What percentage of priests are estimated to have molested children, and how does that compare to the general population?

There are many things to admire about the Catholic Church and Catholic christians like PJB, but there is something very un-Godly about the nature of the Catholic priesthood. I’m sorry if that offends anyone.

Your question as to why would anyone with a “healthy sexual attraction to the opposite sex become a priest” is one that us Catholics were exposed to way back in our early cathechism. We were taught that to become a priest one had to be called by God, that it was a special calling and was beyond human reason why someone, as you say, would willingly abstain from sex, give up the prospect of having a family, and generally devote their entire life to the Church. I suppose you could say that to get married requires a special calling as well, one that also calls for much sacrifice and goes against man’s biological bent towards promiscuity.

When I was in my teens I also thought being a priest was too big a sacrifice, one that I was either unwilling to make or one that I simply hadn’t received the calling for. I couldn’t imagine how difficult it would be to maintain that committment.

But then as I got older I began to notice many married couples walking in the mall or out for dinner and many times the husband would appear to be in relatively decent physical shape, healthy and fit, and the wife would be, well, lets just say, she was quite a bit larger and heavier than her husband. Lets just say the stretch pants she was wearing did a poor job of hiding her weight.

The wife could no longer be considered, I’m afraid to say, physically or sexually attractive, yet here was this guy who was staying true to his committment to stay with her. And, similar to Jack’s question, I thought if this guy has a healthy sexual attraction to women why would he stay married to someone who most probably no longer sexually excites him? Why would he share his bed with such a sexually-neutral partner when, given his own relatively decent appearance, he could get a woman much more attractive and sexy, perhaps even a bit younger?

So the question Jack asks could also be extended to: why would anyone with a healthy sexual attraction to the opposite sex ever get married? Why would any man willingly give up the option and freedom of having sex with multiple beautiful women and get married? Why would he voluntarily continue to sleep side by side with a woman who simply doesn’t excite him anymore? Isn’t that unnatural too? If man is, in fact, wired biologically to have sex with women then where in nature’s law does it say that it is only limited to one woman and not several? Arguments against priestly celibacy could just as easily be leveled against the institution of marriage, especially for those poor men who are married to women who could never be called sexually attractive. Is there something wrong with their sexuality too?

Why not let Roman rite priests marry? The Uniate priests (who are also Catholic for those of you who do not know) do with no problem with their parishes. The Catholic Church has always had married priests. This may alleviate a lot of fears if nothing else.

We may see that sooner or later due to the shortage of priests. I know this issue comes up whenever there is one of these scandals in the church, but I’m not so sure just allowing priests to marry is the solution to this particular problem. It would be interesting to compare numbers in other vocational categories to see if there is an inordinate percentage of Catholic priests who are pedophiles. My instinct tells me that there are just as many Protestant ministers, teachers, day camp counselors, uncles, and grocery store clerks who are also engaged in this kind of abuse and, I would assume, most of them are married. But this would be an interesting comparison if anyone can come up with this. This might help us determine if allowing priests to marry might make a difference.

It seems to me that to look at this entire phenomenon – now in its 4th wave since the mid-1980s, you have to look at the larger picture of forces acting in American society. I don’t think there is a ‘conspiracy’, but I do think there is a monstrous ‘synergy’ that keeps pushing this tornado to blow through, turn around, and come back through – again and again. And I think those synergistic forces are hugely dangerous to democracy.

I’ve put up two essays on my site (Chez Odysseus) in the past couple of days trying to get a larger and clearer picture.

Blaming this sexual abuse phenomenon on homosexuals is really cowardly. It was not all “boys,” .What difference does it make if it is a boy or a girl when a trusted priest who is supposed to be holy is sodomizing a young child!?!

I can’t think of a more heinous crime. And to cover it up and let pedophiles continue to operate is just as bad.

I am not anti-catholic, many are my dear friends and I feel for them now as their faith is shaken by these monsters.

You know what sums it up for me…JR Fountain is one of those adolescent conservatives that makes it so easy for liberals to call us racist and ignorant. Here he goes attacking with everything he’s got over a topic he knows nothing about.

First and foremost he needs to defend the fact that child molestation in American society is at the very least double what it is in the priesthood.
Of course, like our confident friend Jr. Fountain, I despise the fact that we don’t live in a perfect world. However I read so I know statistics like how Catholics give more charity than any other entity in the world.
More have been helped than hurt by such a wide margin that the Catholic Church will always truly be above reproach in this fallen world. Until you can at least get the molestation level of your own institution (the U.S.A.) down you have no standing to be critical.

Undoubtedly Catholic doctrine has inspired more good than evil…without the Catholic Church there is no United States of America, the reverse is not true and we’ll know that for sure when America dies because its too full of the sons of the KKK like Jr. Fountain and the Holy Church goes on stronger than ever like it truly is now despite the pathetic vitriol of bitter anti-Catholic Americans. (There’s a reason why the Catholic Church is the richest non governmental institution in the world…and its not from appeasing white trash.)

The highest levels of the Catholic Church are as immoral and decadent as was the Roman aristocracy under Nero or Caligula.
Contemplating the immorality rampant in modern Roman Catholicism — and the barbaric superstitions, blood lust and end-of-days fanaticism of American evangelism — one is reminded of Nietzsche’s observation that the last Christian had died on the cross.

I suspect these institutions would be utterly incomprehensible and abominable to Jesus were he to indeed return.

Jose, your comment is an insult to the Roman aristocracy. The evidence for their low crimes comes from poets – Catullus, Martial, Juvenal, Persius – who were trying to depict them in the most negative fashion. And they were living under principes who could proscribe and kill them for any and no reason, so their sycophancy is understandable.

No, the best comparison for the Vatican is the US Congress where corrupted and venal office holders loot the treasury and screw their constituents on a regular basis. To piggy back up on your final comment, Jefferson-Washington-Adams-Madison would find today’s US government incomprehensible.

I find that usually the worst cowards and scumbags are the ones going around telling everyone else how they’re the worst cowards and scumbags.

So in conclusion I won’t call you a coward or a scumbag just for coming on here and showing us how anti-Catholic you are.

P.S. Please send me a link to the websites where you go leave these comments about American public school teachers who have much more tragic rates of pedophilia and molestation, yet very few righteous bringers of condemnation like yourself to judge them.

Are Jose and Philip hiding a bias here..are they upset because their marriage was overturned?

Also please address the fact that the Catholic Church gives more charity and does less harm than the the United States or some leftist NGO that goes around the world killing innocent babies.

You guys need to grow up and learn to separate true evil (which undoubtedly pedophile priests are) from an institution that does an unquantifiable amount of good but is still plagued by evil–just like whatever institution you’re now a part of or the ones that helped form you in the past.

Hypocrisy removes any seriousness from your criticism and makes you seem like idiots.

We rank and file Catholics have to take back the church. It is full of vipers at the top end. Archdiocese are sheltering pervert priests. That give the “counseling” and send to parishes far away. But they never fire them unless the law steps in and public opinion is too much for the so-called “church leaders.

Having said what OUGHT to be done, probably won’t do diddly dick shit because the foxes are in charge of hen house, and that starts with the pope, himself.

The RCC attracts queers to serve. Where else can a queer hide and have his own perverty kingdom–and get paid for it?